


Answers

by NerdAlert394



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1609328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdAlert394/pseuds/NerdAlert394
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene in The Christmas Invasion. Rose gets some answers, and then her and the Doctor discover a new way to settle arguments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Answers

****

“What did you say then? Go on, some sort of alien curse or something?”

Mickey’s questions went unanswered as the four of them walked back towards the TARDIS. Rose kept peeking at the new Doctor out of the corner of her eye, but he just kept staring straight ahead. She couldn’t tell if he was angry, upset, or maybe just plain disappointed with the whole of the human race. After all, he had just saved them all only for one of them to turn right around and prove him wrong. The old Doctor would have been ranting and raving about ‘stupid apes’ and their tendencies to do every wrong thing. She didn’t know how this new Doctor would react.

They came to a halt in front of the TARDIS, and her mom and Mickey looked on as she pulled out her key and opened the door.

The new Doctor blinked once, “Right, well, suppose I should go change out of these. Even if they are extremely comfy, they’re not all that well equipped for piloting, running, chasing, sword-fighting, and or any other of the many physical activities that time and space travel require of me! Don’t know what I’m going to wear though… Don’t know what’ll look good, feel good, and allow for ample nonrestrictive movement in this body. Suspect I’ll just have to learn by trial and error.” He finished with a sigh. The three humans around him stared, mesmerized by the amount of speed with which he could now talk.

“Blimey, but you’re gonna drive us all bonkers talking like that! Don’t you ever need to breathe?” Jackie asked incredulously.

“Well, technically not all the time.” seeing the disbelieving faces surrounding him he continued, “Time Lord physiology. I’ve got a respiratory bypass. Much more advanced than your simple little human bodies. Was that rude?” Rose nodded. “Oh. I might have to work on that. Well off we go!” he turned towards the door to the TARDIS and took a few steps inside. “Coming Rose?”

Jackie turned and grabbed her daughters wrist, “Oh no! You can’t leave now! It’s Christmas! You have to stay the night at least, if not until New Year! Oh, please Rose! You just got back after that whole ordeal, and I won’t have you scampering off so quickly.”

Rose pealed her mother’s hand off her arm and turned to the Doctor with a pleading look. He stared at her for a moment, before giving a tiny half grin and slight nod. She broke out into a huge smile.

“Alright mum. We’ll stay, but the Doctor’s right. He needs to get changed, and I’ve got to go get some stuff from my room. You and Mickey go home and start getting things set, and we will be there after a while. Yeah?” Rose gave Jackie a hug before turning to enter the TARDIS. “We shouldn’t be too long. Promise.”

“Alright, but don’t think that we’re gonna be doing all the work. If we have to set up, you lot have to clean up after. I’m not your maid.” The sentence would have had more bite to it if the smile on Jackie’s face hadn’t stretched from ear to ear. Rose watched as she and Mickey turned and began walking back to the flat, before closing the doors and walking up the steps to meet the new Doctor by the consol.

“So…” she said nervously. “What now?”

“I do have to go change. What did you have to get out of your room? Laundry?”

Her chin dropped down as a blush spread upwards across her face. “Oh, um, I didn’t really need… anything. Just thought that we could… You know… Talk or something.” She stuttered out slowly, without looking up at him. “It’s just that, you’re so… and I’m not…” she cleared her throat, “Never mind. I’ll just go home and help them, see you in a bit.” Rose turned on her heel fully prepared to run out the doors of the machine she had tried so hard to get into just a few days ago. Back when…

Before she could get far though, a hand reached out and snagged her sleeve. She looked down at it, the odd hand that had grown out of his arm like a blossoming flower. She shivered slightly at the memory.

“Rose, I know that this is hard to process. I should have told you about it before, but I can try and explain it to you now, if you want. Might make it a bit easier to accept.” He looked down at her with his new longer brown hair falling into his new brown eyes. He looked so open, so unlike her short-haired, leather-wearing, rough, northern Doctor. His hand fell from her sleeve as he stuffed them into the pockets of Howard’s dressing gown.

She nodded slightly, and faced him again. “Yeah, alright.”

Immediately his mouth shot into a wide grin, and his eyes lit up. He even bounced in place a little. “Marvelous! But this kind of a talk requires a cuppa, I think. What do you say?”

“Sounds wonderful.” She sighed with a slight smile.

They both turned and walked side by side to the kitchen where she got to work heating the water while he searched through the cupboards for different types of tea for them.

“Aha!” he yelled as he pulled out a purple and red tin. “This, Rose Tyler, is possibly the best tea ever made in the whole of time and space. It comes from Silaxjurian, the third planet from the fourth sun of the Exerberus System. It’s made from eight different kinds of plants and fruits, none of which are found in any other system! First time I had it, I picked up at least eighteen boxes of the stuff so I wouldn’t run out.” He rambled on as he scooped it into the mugs, with perfect timing as she had just pulled the kettle off the stove to pour the water in.

They sat across from each other at the little table, taking turns adding milk and sugar. She opened a tin of biscuits between them and grabbed one to dip in her, apparently, amazing tea. They both raised their mugs at the same time.

“Cheers!”

Rose brought the mug to her lips just in time to be sprayed all over by hot tea from across the table. She sat frozen for a moment, eyes closed, chin dripping, hands still holding her own tea. Then she blinked away the hot liquid and stared at him.

While she had been immobile he had been frantically scraping his tongue and pouring the tea that was not on her face into the sink, gagging and flailing about.

“Oh Rose! Do NOT drink that! Ugh! That was abysmally bad, horribly awful, and just down right gross! What was I thinking ever liking that bland, bitter, salty concoction?”

“Uh, Doctor?”

“I must have been mad! No living being in their right mind could drink that! Maybe it’s gone bad! Yes that must be… Oh well the expiration is fine, and the TARDIS keeps the shelves at the perfect temperature so that’s not it.”

“Doctor?”

“Maybe something got in it or –“

“Doctor!”

He spun to face her with multiple boxes of the tea in his arms searching through them to find what went wrong.

“Isn’t it possible that with the new face came new taste buds?”

“Oh yes, very possible, in fact that is the most likely of all the reasons that I spewed my drink all over you. Sorry ‘bout that by the way. I just had to get that vile taste out of my mouth and you happened to be in the splash zone.” Rose cut him off before his gob took full control over him.

“If that is the most likely option, why’ve you got all those boxes open looking for a problem. It’s usually the most simple solution right?”

“Well, because, well I’m in denial really. Because if I don’t like this, then what else won’t I like?”

Rose’s heart plummeted downwards to somewhere around her knees as he continued on listing all of the foods he would have to retry in order to learn about his new taste buds. What else wouldn’t he like? Did that apply to just food, or her? Maybe he would have lost his want for bottle blondes right off the estate. With this new face, maybe he would also be wanting a new companion, or just want to travel alone. Maybe he had wanted her to go and grab her things from her room, and figured that letting her stay for Christmas would be a good place to end their time together. Maybe –

“Rose?” her head jerked up and she quickly tried to school her face into something less panic-like. “What’s the matter?” He asked slowly.

“It’s nothing, I just…” Shaking her head, she beat back the urge to let this blow over. She had come aboard to talk and that’s what they were going to do. “If you don’t like your favorite tea, the best tea in the whole of time and space, well are you going to like… me anymore?” her head fell again, but before it could hang for too long, he was sweeping her up in a great big hug, pulling her feet up off the ground.

“You silly little daft human, of course I still like you! Nothing could stop me from liking you!” he set her down, but kept his hands on her shoulders to hold her in place looking down at her with those great brown eyes. “My Rose Tyler preference is permanent, fixed, unchanging, and unending. You said I was stuck with you Rose. Now, if you want, you can be stuck with me as well.” The Doctor’s eyes, which had started out so confident, were now shyly peeking out from beneath long lashes.

Rose grinned at him slowly, and yanked him forward for another rib crushing hug.

“Course I want to be stuck with you Doctor.” She mumbled into the fabric of Howard’s robe. “Always.”

“Marvelous! In that case, and now that I’ve ruined tea, what say we go get changed hmm? Got your clothes all wet and stained with my inability to grab a napkin, or aim better I suppose, so you’ll need to change too.” He said bounding away from her.

“Really only got my face actually. Jackets a bit damp but it’ll dry soon enough.” Rose said as she looked down at herself. He tossed her a towel, which she caught without looking up. As she wiped herself off, a large grin overtook her face. “You want some help picking out some new duds? I could help you figure out what looks, sexy.” Her grin turned wicked as she teased him, remembering his rant about being new and untested on the ship.

“Very funny. That quip bought the time I needed in order to figure out the blood control, and really! Blood control? Could they have been any more obvious? That type of trickery is just dull now. They could have at least tried to make me work, but no, just some basic old hocus pocus.” he sighed.

“Hocus pocus that almost got people killed.”

“Oh nobody could’ve died! Weren’t you listening up there?”

“Might’ve tuned out in the middle. You were talking an awful lot.” The Doctor scowled at her cheeky smirk. “Besides, even if the Sycorax couldn’t have actually made the people jump off the roof, all it would’ve taken was a strong gust of wind, or a misstep when they came to and we still could have had some major A positive blood spillage going on down here. I’m almost surprised no one did fall.”

The Doctor looked at her in shock. “I never even thought of that. I knew pressing the button would release them from the spell, but I never thought about what would happen when they were released.” His eyes were wide, and his brows drawn down in bewilderment.

Rose took his hand, “You did have some other things on your mind at the moment, Doctor. Besides,” she squeezed his fingers, “that’s what I’m here for. To think of the obvious stuff so you don’t have to.” They smiled at each other, and then he pulled her along behind him out of the galley.

“Where you taking me Doctor?”

“Wardrobe of course. You said you’d help me pick out something to wear, and I still have to explain the regeneration process to you. Figure we can kill two birds with one stone.” He quipped as they entered the vast room that made up the TARDIS wardrobe.

Rose noticed as she looked around that though the clothes she’d seen in here before were all still there, they were shuffled around a bit.

“Did you move the stuff in here Doctor?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. The TARDIS did that. All the clothes are now in my new body’s size, and the ones she thinks I will prefer have been moved closer to the dressing room for me to try on.”

Rose stared around in awe.

"You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to her. Every time I think I’ve gotten the hang of this ship, she does something incredible like this that just makes me remember how alien it all is.” She patted a coral strut holding an assortment of silk scarves, and feeling a surge of fondness, leaned over and kissed it with a smack of her lips. “Oh I never want to get used you girl!” The lights in the room brightened to an almost blinding intensity before dimming again, and Rose giggled and looped her arm around the coral.

This time it was the Doctor’s turn to stare in awe. “You just kissed the TARDIS.” He said disbelievingly as she continued to giggle hysterically. “I don’t think anyone’s ever kissed the TARDIS before.”

“Well then, I think it was about time someone did.” Rose tried to school her features into a serious face, but failed miserably and fell over onto a pile of wool coats. The Doctor’s lips grew into a wide grin and he dove into the pile beside her, both of them chuckling. After a minute or two they quieted down and lay silent on the hill of fabric.

“Rose?”

“Yeah Doctor?”

“I’m sorry.” He uttered softly. She turned on her side and propped herself up on her elbow to look at his face. He wasn’t looking at her, but rather up into the vast expanses of the room. “I truly am. I should have told you about my ability to regenerate a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked quietly. “All those nights when I couldn’t sleep and we would talk for hours about everything and nothing while you tinkered on the TARDIS, why not tell me then?”

He sighed deeply, “I just thought, well hoped really, that you would never have to witness it. Wishful thinking I suppose. Part of me fought against the thought that there would ever be something that I wouldn’t be able to get us both away from safely. I was living in denial basically.” He finally turned to look at her. Her brown eyes bored into his as she weighed his reasoning in her head. A tiny smile formed on her face.

“Well, you already said you’re sorry, so now I guess we just have to hug it out.” The words had barely left her lips before she was grabbed into a bear hug which she returned whole heartedly. They held each other long past the point of necessary, smiling away. When they finally pulled away, he placed a chaste kiss atop her forehead before pulling her to her feet.

The next hour was spent with him trying on multiple outfits in all varieties of color and style from Old West cowboy, to nerd chic. During this, he explained about the regeneration process. Rose ignored most of the technical babel, but figured out that it was a full and total transformation. Every cell in his body had changed, but he was still the same man at the core. To Rose, it sounded like Time Lords kept their souls, but could change the outer appearance of their bodies. She didn’t know why he had to make things so complicated, but it seemed like this new body was quite fond of hearing his own voice, so she let him blabber on at her.

When they both agreed on an outfit, which he felt he could move in easily and she said made him look fit, he went into the dressing room to change.

“Doctor, I’m gonna go help mum and Mickey finish setting up ‘kay?” Rose yelled through the door.

“Alright! See you in a few!” he yelled back. She was halfway to the door when he yelled her name and she looked to see his head stuck out of a crack in the door.

He smiled widely at her, “I like hugging things out.”

She laughed at him with his brown eyes, hair sticking up all over the place and his tongue pressed against his teeth.

“Me too, Doctor.”

 


End file.
